Did Nazi Germany explode a nuclear bomb in its last days?

A German historian has claimed in a new book that Nazi scientists successfully tested a tactical nuclear weapon in the last months of World War II.

Rainer Karlsch said that new research in Soviet and also Western archives, along with measurements carried out at one of the test sites, provided evidence for the existence of the weapon.

"The important thing in my book is the finding that the Germans had an atomic reactor near Berlin which was running for a short while, perhaps some days or weeks," he told the BBC.

"The second important finding was the atomic tests carried out in Thuringia and on the Baltic Sea."

Mr Karlsch describes what the Germans had as a "hybrid tactical nuclear weapon" much smaller than those dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

'Bright light'

He said the last test, carried out in Thuringia on 3 March 1945, destroyed an area of about 500 sq m, killing several hundred prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates.

The weapons were never used because they were not yet ready for mass production. There were also problems with delivery and detonation systems.

"We haven't heard about this before because only small groups of scientists were involved, and a lot of the documents were classified after they were captured by the Allies," said Karlsch.

"I found documents in Russian and Western archives, as well as in private German ones."

One of these is a memo from a Russian spy, brought to the attention of Stalin just days after the last test. It cites "reliable sources" as reporting "two huge explosions" on the night of 3 March.

Karlsch also cites German eyewitnesses as reporting light so bright that for a second it was possible to read a newspaper, accompanied by a sudden blast of wind.

The eyewitnesses, who were interviewed on the subject by the East German authorities in the early 1960s, also said they suffered nose-bleeds, headaches, and nausea for days afterwards.

Karlsch also pointed to measurements carried out recently at the test site that found radioactive isotopes.

Sceptical response

His book has provoked huge interest in Germany, but also scepticism.

It has been common knowledge for decades that the Nazis carried out atomic experiments, but it has been widely believed they were far from developing an atomic bomb.

"The eyewitnesses he puts forward are either unreliable or they are not reporting first-hand information; allegedly key documents can be interpreted in various ways," said the influential news weekly Der Spiegel.

"Karlsch displays a catastrophic lack of understanding of physics," wrote physicist Michael Schaaf, author of a previous book about Nazi atomic experiments, in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.

"Karlsch has done us a service in showing that German research into uranium went further than we'd thought up till now, but there was not a German atom bomb," he added.

It has also been pointed out that the United States employed thousands of scientists and invested billions of dollars in the Manhattan Project, while Germany's "dirty bomb" was allegedly the work of a few dozen top scientists who wanted to change the course of the war.

Karlsch himself acknowledged that he lacked absolute proof for his claims, and said he hoped his book would provoke further research.

But in a press statement for the book launch, he is defiant.

"It's clear there was no master plan for developing atom bombs. But it's also clear the Germans were the first to make atomic energy useable, and that at the end of this development was a successful test of a tactical nuclear weapon."

BBC

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Nazi Secret Weapons: Schallkanone -The Sound Gun

Schallkanone. Also called the Sound Gun. This weapon has little mention anywhere. The idea was to produce high frequency waves that would burst the ear-drums of enemy soldiers. Charming.

It was also called  Pressure wave anti-personnel device: sound acoustic cannon.

Men of Hitler's war machine were studying different ways of killing a man. One way to harm a person - a strong influence on low frequency sound (infrasound). The first experiments were carried out on, of course, prisoners.  Under the infrasound, they panicked, they felt dizziness, pain in the internal organs, and had diarrhea.

This effect the Nazis tried to translate into an acoustic gun. But the infrasound stubbornly refused to extend the beam in a given direction, which is why all its impact was felt  first on the staff of this sonic cannon, Schallkanone - they themselves had panic attacks and sudden diarrhea.

Nowadays every schoolboy knows that the sound waves of low frequency can not be a direct beam. Focus can be given only to the sound of very high frequency (ultrasound), but it  does not have such a negative impact on our body.

German engineer Richard Valaushek who invented this type of weapons, apparently knew little about it and stubbornly continued to improve his invention. But as they say, "perseverance and a little effort" - in January 1945, that is already at the end of the war, he introduced the "Commission on research and development," his infernal machine. After the test, the device members of the commission said that a normal machine gun worked much more effectively, and cost less. As a result, the sound the gun was not introduced in the German army and become a formidable "weapon of retaliation" Wehrmacht.

After the war, a prototype of this acoustic weapon fell into the hands of the Americans. In the secret documents of that time it states that "sample acoustic cannon emits a loud sound that makes people closer than 50 meters from the source to lose consciousness, and at a closer distance could be fatal .." The Americans thoroughly investigated all captured specimens of Nazi secret weapons, but about the sound cannon, they also recognized that a simple machine gun shoots further than 50 meters, and in general, it is easier to deal with, even though it does not have such a formidable mental effect.

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Nazi Germany's Secret Weapons and crafts: The 'UFO' Haunebu
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Nazi Superguns: Karl Gerat: Used in Warsaw Uprising

This is what the Karl could do: 28 August, 1944, building hit by 2-ton mortar shell from a Karl-Gerat

"Karl-Gerät" (040/041) (German literally "Karl-device") was a World War II German self-propelled siege howitzer (Mörser) designed and built by Rheinmetall. It was the largest self-propelled weapon to see service. Seven guns were built, but only six saw combat between 1941 and 1945. It was used to attack the Soviet fortresses of Brest-Litovsk and Sevastopol, bombarded Polish resistance fighters in Warsaw and participated in the Battle of the Bulge and the attacks against the Remagen Bridgehead. Only one exists today, the others were scrapped after the war.

A section of three 54 cm Karl-Geräte in the field. The Munitionsschlepper is shown on the extreme right.




The great gun fires

The only remaining Karl Gerat today: At the Kubinka Tank Museum, Russia.

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Nazi Superguns: Schwerer Gustav and Dora

Schwerer Gustav (Heavy Gustav) and Dora were the names of the German 80 cm K (E) railway guns. They were developed in the 1930s by Krupp in order to destroy heavily fortified positions. They weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes, and could fire shells weighing seven tonnes to a range of 37 kilometers (23 miles). Designed in preparation for World War II, and intended for use against the deep forts of the Maginot Line, they were not ready for action when the Wehrmacht outflanked the line during the Battle of France. Gustav was used in the Soviet Union at the siege of Sevastopol during Operation Barbarossa. They were moved to Leningrad, and may have been intended for Warsaw. Gustav was captured by US troops and cut up, whilst Dora was destroyed near the end of the war to avoid capture by the Red Army.

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Nazi Secret Weapons: Wind Cannon (WindKanone) and The Artificial Tornado Vortex Cannon

Artificial tornado vortex cannon

The aim was production of an artificial tornado to destroy enemy aircraft.

With the actual device, tornadoes were obtained up to a height of only 300 meters, which is not enough for the effective destruction of an aircraft, as it can fly much higher. In tests the device successfully created tornadoes that destroyed wooden sheds within a radius of 100-150 meters from the unit.

The principle of creating an artificial tornado was...

Large pipe is filled with a combustible gas

It is sent into the combustion chamber, where the burning gas spins a turbine

Then through a rotating nozzle glowing gas is released into the atmosphere;
air is drawn into the process of the rotation and creates an artificial tornado.

This type of weapon did not catch the attention of the German Army, as a small tornado could only shoot down an aircraft flying at a low altitude, and that too only with difficulty.

Wind Cannon, Windkanone

The operating principle of the same, only this gun shoots small but very powerful portions of rapidly rotating gas. These "mini-vortexes" are stable for a long time, the energy and the direction of its movement.

But again, the effectiveness of such "gas shells" was small. Their energy rapidly decreases with increasing distance, the velocity becomes much lower, the accuracy of the shots is very low especially when the wind is strong.


Such a vortex cannon could break plywood huts and even small brick walls. But it could not affect aircraft flying in the sky. A conventional shot gun would be far more useful.

Like the Vortex Gun, the Wind Cannon was also developed by a factory in Stuttgart during the war. It was a type of gun that would eject a jet of compressed air against enemy aircraft. It was a strange device consisted of a large angled barrel like a bent arm resting in an immense cradle like some enormous broken pea-shooter lying askew. The cannon worked by the ignition of critical mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen in molecular proportions as near as possible. The powerful explosion triggered off a rapidly-ejected projectile of compressed air and water vapor, which, like a solid "shot" of air, was as effective as a small shell. Experimental trials of the cannon at Hillersleben demonstrated that a 25mm-thick wooden board could be broken at a distance of 200m. Nitrogen peroxide was deployed in some of the experiments so that the brown color would allow the path and destination of the otherwise transparent projectile to be observed and photographed. The tests proved that a powerful region of compressed and high-velocity air could be deployed with sufficient force to inflict some damage. However, the aerodynamics of a flying aircraft would almost surely neutralized the effectiveness of this cannon. In addition the effects of the cannon on a fast-flying aircraft was quite different from that on a fixed ground target. Still, the cannon was installed on a bridge over the Elbe, but with no significant results -- either because there were no aircraft or simply there were no successes (as one might suspect). The wind cannon was an interesting experiment but a practical failure.

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The Nazi scientist who made the V-2: Wernher von Braun

Von Braun with top Nazi officials in 1941

Von Braun was the father of the rocket technology under Nazi Germany. He surrendered to the Americans and flourished in the US later.

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German American rocket physicist and astronautics engineer, becoming one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. Wernher von Braun is sometimes said to be the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century.

In his 20s and early 30s, von Braun was the central figure in Germany's pre-war rocket development program, responsible for the design and realization of the deadly V-2 combat rocket during World War II. After the war, he and some of his rocket team were taken to the United States as part of the then-secret Operation Paperclip. In 1955, ten years after entering the country, von Braun became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Von Braun worked on the American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program before joining NASA, where he served as director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. In the words of NASA, he is "without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history. His crowning achievement ... was to lead the development of the Saturn V booster rocket that helped land the first men on the Moon in July 1969." He received the 1975 National Medal of Science.

Braun in Nazi Germany

Von Braun had been under SD surveillance since October 1943. A report stated that he and his colleagues Riedel and Gröttrup were said to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening that they were not working on a spaceship and that they felt the war was not going well; this was considered a "defeatist" attitude. A young female dentist who was an SS spy reported their comments. Combined with Himmler's false charges that von Braun was a communist sympathizer and had attempted to sabotage the V-2 program, and considering that von Braun was a qualified pilot who regularly piloted his government-provided airplane that might allow him to escape to England, this led to his arrest by the Gestapo.

Rockets developed in Nazi Germany. Braun was behind them.

The unsuspecting von Braun was detained on March 14 (or March 15), 1944 and was taken to a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), where he was imprisoned for two weeks without even knowing the charges against him. It was only through the Abwehr in Berlin that Dornberger was able to obtain von Braun's conditional release and Albert Speer, Reichsminister for Munitions and War Production, convinced Hitler to reinstate von Braun so that the V-2 program could continue. Citing from the "Führerprotokoll" (the minutes of Hitler's meetings) dated May 13, 1944 in his memoirs, Speer later relayed what Hitler had finally conceded: "In the matter concerning B. I will guarantee you that he will be exempt from persecution as long as he is indispensable for you, in spite of the difficult general consequences this will have."

Surrender to the Americans

The Soviet Army was about 160 km from Peenemünde in the spring of 1945 when von Braun assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Afraid of Soviet cruelty to prisoners of war, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender to the Americans. Kammler had ordered relocation of von Braun's team into central Germany; however, a conflicting order from an army chief ordered them to join the army and fight. Deciding that Kammler's order was their best bet to defect to the Americans, von Braun fabricated documents and transported 500 of his affiliates to the area around Mittelwerk, where they resumed their work. For fear of their documents being destroyed by the SS, von Braun ordered the blueprints to be hidden in an abandoned mine shaft in the Harz mountain range.

Von Braun after surrender to the Americans

While on an official trip in March, von Braun suffered a complicated fracture of his left arm and shoulder after his driver fell asleep at the wheel. His injuries were serious, but he insisted that his arm be set in a cast so he could leave the hospital. Due to this neglect of the injury he had to be hospitalized again a month later where his bones had to be re-broken and re-aligned.

In April, as the allied forces advanced deeper into Germany, Kammler ordered the science team to be moved by train into the town of Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps where they were closely guarded by the SS with orders to execute the team if they were about to fall into enemy hands. However, von Braun managed to convince SS Major Kummer to order the dispersion of the group into nearby villages so that they would not be an easy target for U.S. bombers.

On May 2, 1945, upon finding an American private from the U.S. 44th Infantry Division, von Braun's brother and fellow rocket engineer, Magnus, approached the soldier on a bicycle, calling out in broken English: "My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender." After the surrender, von Braun spoke to the press:

"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”

The American high command was well aware of how important their catch was: von Braun had been at the top of the Black List, the code name for the list of German scientists and engineers targeted for immediate interrogation by U.S. military experts. On June 19, 1945, two days before the scheduled handover of the area to the Soviets, US Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the US Army Ordnance in London, and Lt Col R. L. Williams took von Braun and his department chiefs by jeep from Garmisch to Munich. The group was flown to Nordhausen, and was evacuated 40 miles (64 km) southwest to Witzenhausen, a small town in the American Zone, the next day. Von Braun was subsequently recruited to the U.S. under Operation Overcast.

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Cheap Holiday Packages to Turkey

One of the tourist spots that has been said to be best-maintained is Turkey. The country boasts its magnificent sceneries which would definitely give you an experience you'll definitely not forget. From the sunshine, the scent and breeze of the sea, the fantastic Mediterranean food, and of course the historical view of the magnificent Asia Minor. In this kind of place. Definitely it is one great place to avail cheap holiday packages.

A Turkish holiday connotes a lot of fun and enjoyment. The place is the rendezvous of people who wants to have a break. People from different cultures like Europeans and Asians flock into this place, availing cheap holiday packages, to enjoy and relax. History will explain of what have had happened in Turkey, the destruction due to some events, now have been one of the attractions of this country. The fact cannot be denied that the culture and customs of Turkey has been also one of the tourists' attraction.

You can definitely enjoy a lot of activities, at a cheap holiday package. Yes, you have read it right, cheap holiday package. Most of the tourist contact some travel agencies to have a blast of vacation in Turkey. Enjoying ones vacation in a yacht in the cool sea of the place and be fascinated with the fantastic view of the coastal villages and some historical sites. Take into account that you could enjoy all these by cheap holiday package.

Most of the cheap holiday packages to Turkey really offers special seasonal and festive discounts, definitely the cheapest destination for most tourists, since it is possible to bargain the holidays here. A bargain deal would comprise the cheap airfare and low-cost hotel accommodation. These are non-classed but clean hotels, inexpensive inns and hostels that are definitely for you to have fun and relax. If you a group the best to avail are those holiday villa or a flat.

Luxury accommodations are offered by the five-star international hotel chains which also include various amenity packages and discounts. Turkish Airlines operates international flights to almost all the cities in Europe, New York and other parts of Asia. The fares are very affordable and reasonable, far beyond to compared to the other international airlines.

Availing cheap holiday packages are of course a lot of fun. It is enjoying at a lower cost possible. It is but wise to know certain things on where you could actually find cheap vacations by not risking the fun of having a vacation.

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Japanese ruthlessness during the Second World War

Japanese brutality during the Second World War is legendary. It was perhaps because the Japanese soldiers believed that whatever inhuman acts they did were for good of Japan, for their Emperor. Something like the mentality of the Wehrmacht soldier (especially the SS troops) in Germany. No one else or nothing else mattered.

A Japanese soldier prepares to execute a Chinese

A Japanese torture chamber.

A job well done. the soldier smiles after the massacre.

Japanese bayoneting Chinese civilians.

This is in one of the South East Asian country.

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Drink more soda...it's good for you

Not everyone is happy with the anti-obesity/anti-soda ad produced by the NYC Dept of Health.

And it isn’t just the people who lost their lunches after seeing that globby/fatty/veiny cup of goo.

It’s groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom.

In fact, the CCF was so upset, that they produced their own rebuttal ad and had it printed in the New York Times

BTW, a full page ad in the Times costs upwards of $158,004.

$158,004

And we’re not even including the costs associated with creating the ad.

We’re talking big money.

BIG MONEY

And thinking about that big money awakened the skeptic in me. And that inner skeptic started thinking…who is the Center for Consumer Freedom and why are they spending a ton of money defending our freedoms against anti-cola advertisements?

So, I did a little research into the CCF.

My findings?

Apparently, there are a lot of people who don’t like the CCF.

To them, the CCF is nothing but a front group for the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries.

It runs media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, doctors, health advocates, environmentalists and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, calling them “the Nanny Culture — the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, anti-meat activists, and meddling bureaucrats who ‘know what’s best for you.’ “

Over 40 percent of the group’s 2005 expenditure was paid to Rick Berman’s PR company, Berman & Co. for “management services. As part of its operations CCF runs a series of attack websites.

Sourcewatch

But, don’t take their word for it….Check out the “attack” websites

• PetaKillsAnimals.com


• ActivistCash.com


• PhysicianScam.com


• Trans-FatFacts.com


• AnimalScam.com


• ObesityMyths.com


• CSPIScam.com.


• MercuryFacts.com


• FishScam.com


• SweetScam.com

And, if that ain’t enough, watch this video…

Or listen to the man himself as Rick Berman is interviewed by CNBC’s Rachel Maddow…

So, what do you think?

Is Rick Berman…

• standing up for your freedom against the American nanny state?


• or is he spinning lies in order to promote the interests of his anonymous donors?

.

If you like what you see here, click here for updates

.

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Reference

• Sourcewatch
  
  

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